ADR 0009 Open Source Strategy

ADR-0009: Open-Source Strategy — single-repo AGPL-3.0 release

Status: Accepted (supersedes ADR-0003) Date: 2026-10-09 Author: Crowntime WeCom Archive dev (Haisu-approved product direction) Related: GH-166 (#166), GH-167 (#167), GH-168 (#168), GH-203 (#203), Discussion #178

1. Context

ADR-0003 decided the product would stay closed-source and hosted-only, positioned as fully automated fly-order deterrence for micro teams. Two subsequent shifts reversed its premises:

1. Product: the buyer is the owner of a 1–5 person sales/support team, and the commercial model is a low-price, fully self-serve cloud. Any human involvement in onboarding breaks unit economics, which makes zero-touch self-service — and credible fork/self-host distribution — part of the go-to-market rather than a threat to it.
2. Operations: the repository's security posture was audited end-to-end (2026-10-09 three-way sweep: code + full git history, issues, PRs, discussions, Actions logs). No credentials were ever committed; the remaining production-fingerprint exposure was explicitly accepted with infrastructure hardening (documented risk acceptance, GH-173), and operational originals now live outside the tree (GH-203).

2. Decision

1. License: AGPL-3.0 for the entire single repository — archive core and cloud operations code alike. No proprietary directory, no source exclusion, no additional license restrictions beyond AGPL §7's allowable attribution notices.
2. Release mode: make this repository public. The earlier two-repo sanitized-snapshot model is retired; the snapshot tooling survives only as an optional pre-publish self-check. Git history ships as-is (see GH-173 / GH-203 for the boundary decisions).
3. Edition semantics: APP_EDITION distinguishes selfhost vs cloud runtime behavior only — never a licensing or confidentiality boundary (details in ADR-0008). Self-hosted must not depend on any cloud purchase, trial, or subscription-expiry state.
4. Contributions: DCO (Signed-off-by), no CLA. Future contribution terms may change, but existing DCO contributions never automatically gain closed-source/relicensing rights.
5. Trademark: 康冠时代 (Shenzhen Crowntime Technology Co., Ltd.). Official self-host packages default to a Powered by 康冠时代 attribution notice, enforced declaratively (NOTICE/trademark policy) — no license locks, phone-home, or kill switches. Forks must not present themselves as official products, hosting, or endorsements, but are free to brand their own distributions.
6. Operational boundary: production fingerprints, customer data, and live operational configuration never enter the tree; per-host operational originals live in gitignored local storage (GH-203).

3. Consequences

• Anyone may fork, self-host, or offer competing hosted services under AGPL-3.0 obligations (including §13's network-source offer). The trademark policy prevents impersonation only; it does not — and is not intended to — prohibit lawful competition.
• docs/operations/ carries generalized, host-agnostic operational references; published defect history stays published (transparency is part of the model).
• ADR-0003 (hosted-only strategy) is removed from the tree; this ADR is its successor of record, and the original remains recoverable from git history.
• Governance docs (CONTRIBUTING, Code of Conduct, security policy) describe the DCO/community flow and supersede any older "no external contribution process" statements elsewhere.

4. References

• Discussion #178 — decision convergence
• ADR-0008 — runtime edition and self-hosted policy
• ADR-0005 — cloud billing lifecycle and service gates
• AGPL-3.0, DCO 1.1